For many of us, Deuteronomy 30:1-10 and a parallel passage in Deuteronomy 4:29-31 form a core component of what we understand to be one of the basic doctrines of Judaism, the idea of repentance, teshuva. Israel will sin and be sent into exile, where they will repent and then return to the land:

Deut 30:1 When all these things befall you—the blessing and the curse that I have set before you—you will take them (והשבת) to heart amidst the various nations to which the LORD your God has banished you; 30:2 you will return (ושבת) to the LORD your God and heed His voice, according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and soul; 30:3 the LORD will restore (ושב) you and take you back; and He will bring you together again (ושב) from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you.

NationalThe significance of this passage is most obvious on the national level as a statement that sets forth the program of repentance that Israel must follow if they are to be redeemed from exile. For instance, Rabbi Eliezer must have had this passage in mind when he declared (b. Sanh. 97b):

אם ישראל עושין תשובה נגאלין ואם לאו אין נגאלין.

If Israel repents, they will be redeemed, and if not, they won’t be redeemed.

IndividualIn addition, it is clear that the Rabbis understood the passage as having implications for the individual as well. Thus, for example, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, we find Deut 30:2 rendered rather freely as follows:

The greatest among your righteous are the penitents ([בעלי תשובה]= תתובא מרי, )for, when they sin and repent, their repentance reaches the Glorious Seat of the Lord your God.

Here, the verse is said to establish the efficacy of teshuva for the individual sinner.[1]

Are Rabbinic Teshuva and Biblical
“Return to the LORD” Equivalent?

Do these common interpretations accord with what might have been the original sense of Deuteronomy? Are the rabbinic concept of teshuva, commonly translated as “repentance,” and the biblical phrase “return to the LORD” really equivalent? I would like to suggest that some important differences between the two have been overlooked.

To be sure, the Rabbis consistently understand them to be the same. The very term, teshuva, is, of course, a noun derived from the biblical verb, shuv, “return.” What should give us pause, however, is that the rabbinic term, teshuva, along with the verbal phrase עשה תשובה (“repenting” or “doing repentance”), is a new coinage not found in Bible itself.

The Greek TranslationsAlso, of interest, is that the Septuagint, an early, authoritative Greek translation of the Bible refrains from translating “return to the LORD” as “repent,” preferring to translate it literally as a form of “turning,” whereas there is evidence that later Greek translations did employ the common Greek word for “regret,” metanoia, a close equivalent to teshuva.[2] Is it possible that the Septuagint was observing an important distinction?

Definition of Rabbinic Teshuva: The Mental Act of RepentanceTo begin, we need to arrive at a definition of rabbinic teshuva. Maimonides’ definition in the Mishneh Torah (Hilkhot Teshuva 2:2) is a useful starting point:

What is teshuva? It is when the sinner abandons his (particular form of) sin, removes it from his thoughts, and determines in his heart not to do it again… and, so too, he regrets what happened in the past.

Maimonides’ portrayal of teshuva—quite close to the rabbinic usage, I believe—focuses strikingly on its qualities as a mental act. That makes “repentance,” in fact, an excellent definition of the rabbinic concept, teshuva.[3]

The Biblical PhraseThe question then is how to understand the biblical phrase, “(re)turn to the LORD.” Biblical scholars nearly unanimously have understood it as a metaphor, suggesting that it really means: “return to covenantal obedience.” This has the odd result of simply switching out God in the phrase, “to the LORD,” with the abstraction, “to covenantal obedience.”[4] One late biblical formulation does indeed change the phrase to mean precisely that (Neh 9:29):

וַתָּעַד בָּהֶם לַהֲשִׁיבָם אֶל תּוֹרָתֶךָ…

You warned them to turn them back to Your torah…

But that compels us to consider the question: if that is the intention of the phrase, why is that not made explicit in the earlier standard formulations?[5] Clearly, there is reason to consider whether the standard covenantal explanation is, in fact, the right one.

The Development of the Phrase, “Return to the LORD,”
in the Hebrew Bible

A three-fold development in the history of the phrase’s use impacts both our understanding of the passages in Deuteronomy, as well as the history of teshuva as a concept.

A. Appeal: Early Prophetic Usage (Amos, Hosea, Isaiah)Among the eighth century prophets, Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah, the phrase was used frequently, not in a context of “covenantal obedience,” but rather one of appeal or petition. Thus, “returning” or, perhaps better, “turning aside,” “to the LORD” is seen as the natural and necessary response to affliction in Amos 4:8-11.

10:11 I have wrought destruction among you As when God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah; You have become like a brand plucked from burning.

— Yet you did not turn to Me declares YHWH.

In other words, if you believe that Israel’s god is the one bringing a given affliction, then you appeal to that god to stop. What’s at stake is not so much obedience or morality as much as recognition: beseeching the god of Israel to remedy an affliction establishes that it is that god who is responsible for your trouble.

In Hosea, “returning to the LORD” appears parallel to verbs of seeking like בקש (see Hos 5:15-6:1, 7:10), which also indicates a process of appeal, most likely in a cultic context. The people must seek God in his place:

Hos 5:15 And I will return to My abode till they realize their guilt. In their distress, they will seek Me And beg for My favor. 6:1 “Come, let us turn to YHWH: He attacked, and He can heal us; He wounded, and He can bind us up.

Isa 19:22 YHWH will afflict and then heal the Egyptians, when they turn to YHWH, he will respond to their entreaties and heal them.

This “turn” does not appear to be any “return to covenantal obedience,” but rather a process of appeal. This is a more literal sense of “turn” in keeping with the personal quality of the phrase; the people are meant to approach God for help in a site dedicated to His name.

B. Restoration of Relationship: Jeremiah Jeremiah in the late seventh and early sixth centuries employs the metaphor of Israel as God’s wife of child. In this connection, he uses the phrase in reference to returning to a prior, familial relationship:

Jer 3:8 I noted: Because Rebel Israel had committed adultery, I cast her off and handed her a bill of divorce; yet her sister, Faithless Judah, was not afraid—see too went and whored… 3:10 and after all that, her sister, Faithless Judah, did not return to Me…

This is not so much a demand for moral renewal or obedience, anything like “repentance,” as much as an invitation to reinitiate a prior relationship. Israel has strayed away from its deity, represented by husband or father, by worshipping others, but has an opportunity to return and once again enter into a relationship of worship with the Israelite deity. The connection to worship of “return to the LORD” is preserved, but it is extended by Jeremiah from a decision to appeal to the deity in particular circumstances to a broader practice of worship, an overall relationship.

C. Cessation of Sin: Later Biblical TextsThe phrase “(re)turn (שוב)” underwent a significant transformation in later forms of biblical Hebrew, from around the Babylonian exile and on. Rather than finding the positive formulation, “return to the LORD,” we find a negative formulation—returning from— attested more frequently, as in certain later, editorial sections of the book of Kings:[8]

This formulation clearly changes the sense of shuv. Rather than “returning to God” as an act of appeal or restoration of a relationship, what we have in these later texts is a very focused concern on the necessity of returning from, namely removing wrongdoing for Israel’s midst.

Cessation of Sin as Opposed to
an Act of Teshuva

This development in the later strata of biblical Hebrew helps pave the way for a concept of teshuva as a response to sin, but is not yet identical to the rabbinic concept. For one thing, “turning away from sin” in the Bible is not so much a discrete, efficacious act, as much as a resulting state. Most significantly, in Ezekiel 18:21, for example, the “turn away from sin” does not atone, as it does in rabbinic literature. Rather, it emphasizes that one is judged and allowed to live based on one’s current state of righteousness. The wicked will die, even if they used to be righteous, the righteous will live, even if they used to be wicked—repentance as a process, as we, and the classical rabbis understand it, has no place in Ezekiel 18.

Stated differently, in biblical Hebrew, one cannot “turn away,” in the sense of repent, from a specific sin committed. “Turning away” instead refers to a broader change in state. It is not an interior process; it is not about emotional regret and a mental determination not to sin again. What’s key is not the individual’s act of repentance, but assuring that there is nothing toxic in the community’s midst.

The Deuteronomy Passages

Deut 4:29-31 and Deut 30:1-10, part of the later editorial layers of Deuteronomy,[11] should be counted among the later biblical texts that use shuv in the context of a rectification of behavior: “…you will return to the LORD your God (אלהיך ה׳ עד ושבת) and heed His voice, according to all that I command you today…” (Deut 30:2). These passages preserve the traditional positive formulation, while moving the direction of the phrase’s meaning over to the concern for legal adherence.[12] The meaning would appear to the “cessation of sin” idea: “returning to the LORD” now means listening to his commandments.[13]

That said, we should be careful not to import later connotations of teshuva developed in rabbinic literature, if we wish to interpret these passages in light of their ancient Israelite contexts. Deut 30:1-10 does not assume a nation that has “repented” of its sins in a single act of mental determination; rather its concern is to establish a nation that has effectively removed evil from its midst, Deuteronomy’s abiding concern, and so can adhere to the laws spelled out in the Deuteronomic Code, Deuteronomy 12-26. A divine “circumcision of the heart,” of the sort that comes into focus in Deut 30:1-10, provides a permanent solution to the problem of sin, thus allowing the people to be restored and to persevere in the Land.[14]

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Dr. David Lambert is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he teaches Hebrew Bible and its history of interpretation. He received his A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. at Harvard University in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. He is the author of How Repentance Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture (Oxford Press), which won the 2016 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion (textual studies category) from the American Academy of Religion (AAR).

09/25/2016

[1] For general discussions of the place of “repentance” in rabbinic thought, see Solomon Schechter, Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (London, Adam and Charles Black, 1909), 313-343; and Ephraim Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1975), 462-471.

[3] Some contemporary scholars try to frame the rabbinic definition in terms of the biblical meaning, although the former does not necessarily reflect the latter. For example, Jon Levenson writes:

[Teshuva is] that immensely difficult psycho-social process designated in English (for lack of a better term) as ‘repentance.’ ‘Returning’ or ‘turning around’ might be more accurate.

See: Jon Levenson, “Did God Forgive Adam? An Exercise in Comparative Midrash,” in Jews and Christians: People of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 165. But “turning around” isn’t really more accurate for translating teshuva because no compelling evidence suggests that the Rabbis picked up on the theme of “turning” as part of their definition. It is a mistake to define a term simply on the basis of its etymological origins.

[4] The authoritative study on the phrase has remained William Lee Holladay, The Root ŠÛBH in the Old Testament: With Particular Reference to its Usages in Covenantal Context (Leiden: Brill, 1958).

[5] A similar formulation, “(re)turning to the Law of Moses,” also shows up later among the Dead Sea Scrolls. See 1QS V, 8-9.

[6] See also Hos 5:13-15 and 7:11-16.

[7] For further examples, see also Jer 3:6-7, 3:12, 3:22-23, 15:19, and 31:18.

[8] Scholars typically consider these sections to be Dtr2, namely from the second, exilic edition of the Deuteronomistic History.

[9] For other late texts that use this formulation, see Isa 59:20, Zech 1:4, Mal, 2:6, Job 36:10, Neh 9:35, 2 Chron 7:14, and Dan 9:13.

[10] The negative formulation is found in Jeremiah passages that are found among his so-called sermons, as well as his biography (see, for instance, Jer 36:3), which have been recognized by many scholars as later components of the book of Jeremiah.

[11] On the important question of the relationship between Deut 4:29-31 and Deut 30:1-10 and their relative dating, see Marc Brettler, “Predestination in Deuteronomy 30.1-10,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series (1999): 171-188.

[12] Mal 3:7-8 is another example of this.

[13] Note how Dan 9:13, which clearly reflects the use of shuv in Deuteronomy, replaces its positive formulation with the negative.

[14] Much more can and should be said about these developments, about the later development of teshuva as a concept, and on whether these passages should be seen as sermonic in quality, a command to “turn,” or as part of a prophetic prediction that Israel will “turn” in exile. For all of this, see my How Repentance Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

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